Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.

Saturday, July 02, 2016

SALT RIVER SONGS -

Salt River Songsis Sam Hunt’s
latest collection of poems, written over the last few years in his house that
sits amongst a grove of totara trees on the Arapaoa, one of the five main salt rivers
of the Kaipara Harbour.

As always, his unflinchingly honest, elegiac and moving poems roam
around familiar themes of family, friends and lovers, and the challenges of ageing and mortality.

Salt River Songswill also have an
introduction from writer and journalist Colin Hogg, an old friend of Sam’s and,appropriately, has been published to mark Sam’s 70th birthday (4/7/16).

When I was a kid, I was always up some tree. I had a particular

tree hut, in the last pine down the section to the sea –

I made poems up there. I could, I remember,

hear the poems before I knew them.

Today, I’m 70. Nothing’s changed.

ABOUT THE

AUTHOR:

Born at Castor Bay in 1946, SAM HUNT is one of New Zealand’s
best-known and most celebrated poets. He has been touring and performing his poems for over 50 years, and has
published many collections of his poems, from Between Islands in 1963, to his most recent, Knucklebones:
Poems 1962–2012.

Twelve years ago, Hunt moved onto the Arapaoa River of the Kaipara
Harbour – ‘five / gunshots from humanity’.

Hunt has received major accolades for his services to poetry, including
a QSM, a CNZM and, in 2012, the Prime Minister’s Poetry
Award.